Former First Lady Michelle Obama — one of the nation’s most recognizable Democrats — has stirred speculation about a return to Washington, D.C.
If her “uncontrollable sobbing” is any indication, she wants to return to the capital very, very badly.
On her new podcast, Obama recounts her final day as first lady. She spoke about her “uncontrollable sobbing” after Donald Trump’s inauguration, during her move out of the White House.
“After the inauguration — and you know whose inauguration we were at — that day was so emotional on so many different reasons,” Obama recounted. “To sit on that stage and watch the opposite of what we represented on display… Many people took pictures of me and, ‘You weren’t in a good mood.’ No, I was not… But you had to hold it together, like you do through eight years. And then you walk through the Capitol, you wave goodbye, you get on Marine One, and you take your last flight off flying over the Capitol — where there weren’t that many people there. We saw it, by the way.”
Michelle Obama was so scarred by Trump’s inauguration that she’s recounting a six-year-old scandal about the size of the crowd.
“There were tears. There was that emotion,” she said. “When those doors shut, I cried for 30 minutes straight. Uncontrollable sobbing! Because that’s how much we were holding it together for eight years.”
Obama also attributed her tears to “leaving the home we had been in for eight years, the only home our kids really knew.”
“They remembered Chicago, but they had spent more time in the White House than anywhere,” she said. “So, we were saying goodbye to the staff and all the people who helped to raise them.”
It sounds like Obama misses D.C., despite the pressure to “hold it together.”
Still, she has long denied any plans to run for president. She told the BBC last year, “I detest it. No, I am not going to run.”
Obama made the remark on The Light Podcast. She launched the podcast Tuesday on Audible, an Amazon company.
Some clips of the podcast have been distributed to the press as part of a promotional cycle, and other clips have gone viral, despite Audible’s paywall.
The episodes will remain an Audible exclusive for two weeks, and will be widely available on other podcast platforms after that.
Take a listen —
The podcast is based on Obama’s press tour for her recent book.
“Though only a few thousand people were able to attend the events live, these remarkable conversations can now be heard by everyone,” Audible said in a news release. The eight-episode podcast “goes beyond the book as Michelle Obama and her friends share personal stories and insights listeners won’t encounter anywhere else.”
Obama said in a statement that the book tour was a way to expand on the book’s reflections about dealing with stress and change and a chance to “connect with real people once again.” The podcast, she said, is “a deeper examination of those fun and meaningful moments.”
Obama released her book, The Light We Carry, book on Nov. 15, and kicked off her promotional tour the same night. She was joined in Washington for the first event by DeGeneres.
For the rest of the tour, she joined celebrities like Oprah Winfrey, Ellen DeGeneres, Tyler Perry, David Letterman and more.
The podcast is the first original project in a multiyear deal between Audible and Higher Ground Productions, which was started by Barack and Michelle Obama after they left the White House. The company has produced several acclaimed documentaries, including the Oscar-winning film “American Factory.”
Obama previously hosted The Michelle Obama Podcast as a Spotify exclusive, but the company has since moved on.
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The Horn editorial team and the Associated Press contributed to this article.